Very Interesting and Frightening. I suspect that our legal profession will fight this legislation, fearing that the drug companies will figure out how to get the same "get out of jail" card for their bad drugs. . . Just sneak a "rider" into one of the legitimate bills! Wow. . . the lawyers won't like that!

Meanwhile, I wonder why Monsanto wanted this protection in the first place. After all, GMO foods are "safe", aren't they Bill????

Fortunately, there are a lot of scientist who are standing up and putting pressure on our gutless politicians to reverse this bad legislation.===========================================

United States President Barack Obama has signed a bill into law that was written in part by the very billion-dollar corporation that will benefit directly from the legislation.

On Tuesday, Pres. Obama inked his name to H.R. 933, a continuing resolution spending bill approved in Congress days earlier. Buried 78 pages within the bill exists a provision that grossly protects biotech corporations such as the Missouri-based Monsanto Company from litigation.

With the president’s signature, agriculture giants that deal with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered (GE) seeds are given the go-ahead to continue to plant and sell man-made crops, even as questions remain largely unanswered about the health risks these types of products pose to consumers.

In light of approval from the House and Senate, more than 250,000 people signed a petition asking the president to veto the spending bill over the biotech rider tacked on, an item that has since been widely referred to as the “Monsanto Protection Act.”

“But Obama ignored [the petition],” IB Times’ Connor Sheets writes, “instead choosing to sign a bill that effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future.”

James Brumley, a reporter for Investor Place, explains a little more thoroughly just how dangerous the rider is now that biotech companies are allowed to bypass judicial scrutiny. Up until it was signed, he writes, “the USDA [US Department of Agriculture] oversaw and approved (or denied) the testing of genetically modified seeds, while the federal courts retained the authority to halt the testing or sale of these plants if it felt that public health was being jeopardized. With HR 933 now a law, however, the court system no longer has the right to step in and protect the consumer.”

If the president’s signature isn’t all that surprising, though, consider the genesis of the bill itself. According to an article published Monday in the New York Daily News, US Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) “worked with Monsanto to craft the language in the bill.”

Very Interesting and Frightening. I suspect that our legal profession will fight this legislation, fearing that the drug companies will figure out how to get the same "get out of jail" card for their bad drugs. . . Just sneak a "rider" into one of the legitimate bills! Wow. . . the lawyers won't like that!

Meanwhile, I wonder why Monsanto wanted this protection in the first place. After all, GMO foods are "safe", aren't they Bill????

Fortunately, there are a lot of scientist who are standing up and putting pressure on our gutless politicians to reverse this bad legislation.

Actually you would be wrong on that, George. There are a lot of scientists like yours truly who are tired of the law offices of Dewey, Chetham, and Howe trolling for trailer trash on television when productive people are working so said lawyers can start another class action lawsuit that just might be the one which allows them to retire.

Understand this, George. It is my job to see that we achieve "herd immunity" with influenza vaccinations each year. I'm staying up late tonight analyzing the data for the 2012/2013 flu season where we had a bad outbreak of A/H3N2 in December and then successive outbreaks of B Yamagata and B Brisbane in January through March. I'm not just seeing who got their flu shot and who didn't. Just this morning I wrote a program which documents the tens of thousands of people in our Medicare Advantage population who died of influenza and/or pneumonia. Most of these people died unnecessarily because they didn't get either their annual flu shot our their lifetime 23-valent pneumonia vaccine.

The way to get hundreds of millions of Americans to get their flu shot is to make it as inexpensive as possible. But like ALL therapies, there is no medical treatment without risk of side effect. If it wasn't for special legislation that protected the vaccine manufacturers from the very lawyers you are championing, vaccinations wouldn't be affordable for the vast majority of Americans. Is this a big deal? If you consider that the 1917-1919 A H1N1 flu epidemic was the worst epidemic of all time (killing 20 to 40 million people worldwide) and when you consider that this virus started in a pig farm in Kansas, well yea, it *can* be a big deal.

If you consider that a million Irish died because of a potato blight that could have been prevented with modern techniques, well I tend to take what Monsanto is doing personally and with proper perspective. The good news is that I'm typing from Virginia rather than County Cork because of the mass migration of starving Irish to this country. The good news is that my 14-year-old great grandfather fought in the Union Army because northerners were too lazy to fight it themselves and my great grandfather appreciated the 3 meals a day (needing only to shoot more than be shot at). But really... Food disasters can happen just like The Great Influenza happened and the Irish Potato Famine happened.

Will there be bumps in the road ahead with GMO? I *guarantee* it. But meanwhile we have people to feed around the world, and agriculture needs to get smarter as land size falls, water supplies diminish, and populations grow. GMO is a fast way to get there. It ... is ... inevitable.

Would we be where we are today if Marie Curie sued somebody?

Would we be where we are today if the manufacturers of the smallpox vaccine were sued? (That is the first harmful disease that mankind actually completely eradicated.)

If you consider that a million Irish died because of a potato blight that could have been prevented with modern techniques, well I tend to take what Monsanto is doing personally and with proper perspective.

(emphasis mine)Sorry, Bill, but I have to stop you there. Taking things personally more often engenders a skewed perspective than a proper one. You know full well the problems with letting emotion color your perceptions too much.

Quote:

Would we be where we are today if Marie Curie sued somebody?

Don't you mean if somebody sued Marie Curie? The deal with lawsuits is that they punish people for misbehavior. It doesn't always work the right way, but that's the idea. Companies need to be held accountable when they cheat, and there's a long history of covering up unpleasant (for business) study results. And no, if you took away the lawsuits they wouldn't suddenly decide to be honest.

I think you should also reconsider your picture of who sues. It's not just the people you call "trailer trash".

Finally, don't kid yourself; Obama is in the pocket of big business just like the rest of them, he's just in different pockets than Romney. Okay, maybe he's slightly further towards the lip of the pocket than the average politician.

Sorry, Bill, but I have to stop you there. Taking things personally more often engenders a skewed perspective than a proper one. You know full well the problems with letting emotion color your perceptions too much.

Thank you, Justin, for that segue. Your check is in the mail.

Emphasis in red is my own.

Wikipedia wrote:

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick,[1] commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729. Swift suggests that the impoverished Irish might ease their economic troubles by selling their children as food for rich gentlemen and ladies.[2] This satirical hyperbole mocks heartless attitudes towards the poor, as well as Irish policy in general.

In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.

Honest... I didn't ask Justin to set me up so nicely like that.

Yes, Justin, it *is* personal - and for good reason. And with proper mindset, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. To be completely impersonal is to set someone up for satirical abuse per Jonathan Swift's classic essay.

Jonathan Swift wrote:

A young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.

What type of wine do you serve with stewed Irish child?

Valkenar wrote:

I think you should also reconsider your picture of who sues. It's not just the people you call "trailer trash".

Until there is massive tort reform, then the abuse is warranted.

My vaccine example is the perfect reason why legislation like this is needed.

Who gets sued and for what can be quite arbitrary. We let people put themselves at massive risk by allowing them to purchase/use a knife or a car. But God forbid some high tech entity be out there and someone hurt themselves. The whole f(cost,benefit,risk,awareness) equation goes out the window. We continue to allow a situation per the cerebral palsy babies scenario where lawyers (such as John Edwards) can make a fortune fleecing innocent obstetricians before science is able to catch up with the truth. And it isn't just the fleecing of innocents that's the problem, Justin. The trial attorneys and their clients were not obliged to give back all their ill-gotten gains when they were proven in the court of scientific evidence to be dead wrong. Please tell me where there is justice in that. Are we to shrug our shoulders and chalk it up to justifiable wealth redistribution? Tell that to women in rural areas now who can't get OB care because doctors there can no longer break even.

All I can say about the cerebral palsy baby situation is that karma finally caught up with one of the major lawyer scumbags.

Valkenar wrote:

Finally, don't kid yourself; Obama is in the pocket of big business just like the rest of them, he's just in different pockets than Romney. Okay, maybe he's slightly further towards the lip of the pocket than the average politician.

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